Archive for the ‘Drawing Lessons’ Category

The following is an exerpt from Shamus Culhane's excellent book "Animation: From Script to Screen." It is an incredible resource for those interested in animation. He gives great advice on how to get started in animation and points you to many other great resources to help you become a better artist.  I am starting the exercise he describes below.  I did them for about a month last summer and it proved to be the most rapid improvement of my drawing skills and my imagination that I have seen.  I plan on continuing them now for months to come.

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Exercise: Quick Sketches

Right now the most important task ahead of you is the quick-sketch exercises. I expect you to draw for one hour at least five days a week. Buy lots of paper and pencils because you are going to draw a complete character each minute of the hour. Use a soft pencil and have a handful of sharpened pencils ready to substitute when the first pencil's point is worn down.

In order to avoid doing an exercise in scribbling pointlessly, take one character a day and use a theme, such as fright, hearty laughter, running, walking, jumping. At first, you will be hard put to dream up more than a few poses, and I don't say that you will ever be able to think of sixty, but don't confine yourself to full-face sketches. There is the rear view, profile, and three-quarter to consider, also the sitting instead of standing.

Work at top speed. Above all, never stop to erase! Work with a big stack of paper on the pegs, as much as they will hold. Do two or three drawings on the same sheet of paper, rip it off, and dispose of the drawing rapidly. This is no time to try to put each piece of paper in some neat niche. Try drawing the figure in what seems to be a medium shot, about four inches high for Fatty, and the others in proportion.

Do not be tempted to stop drawing or to slow down in order to toy with some interesting view of a hand. If you want to correct or improve some aspect of a drawing, do it on your own time, after the quick-sketch session is over.

A model sheet of Tiny. Even the hat has to carry out the line
of action.

At first, you probably will not make any drawings of value. After a time you will want to save some particular sketches. Build up a morgue, and after a few months, as your skills improve, you will start weeding out many of the drawings. What looked good at the end of the first month will seem pretty poor stuff at the end of six months of sketching.

Just to vary the tactile senses, try switching to red or blue crayon pencils. Sometimes this will enable you to suddenly draw much better, which means that you have eluded that left side of the brain and its need to control.

What will happen is that as you grow accustomed to rapid sketching, you will find you will be able to put in more detail. Try very hard to confine yourself to that one-minute-per-sketch routine. If possible, buy a stopwatch, or if that is too expensive, use your wristwatch. Place it where you can see it on your drawing table, not on your wrist because that will make you stop drawing to look.

In this model sheet of Fatty, note that there is squash and
stretch in the mass of the face, just as there is on the body.

Don't be discouraged by your first efforts if they are clumsy and out of proportion. If you have tried one pose and it was a failure, try it again and again. It is not necessary to make a new pose for each sketch. Before you start drawing, set yourself some problems: What is the theme going to be? Which character this time? Are you drawing one character more often than the others? Which one have you been avoiding? Make a point of drawing him for the next three days.

A model sheet of Skinny. This is what a pencil test looks like.
Notice that fine details can be read very easily in negative form.

Overcoming Bad Habits

There is a psychological factor to overcome. People have a tendency to do whatever comes easiest, avoiding difficult problems. It is going to be your role to understand this tendency and to circumvent it as often as it crops up. You cannot learn if all you do is what you have already mastered.

If you are having trouble with concepts, use comic strips, comic magazines, and books as sources of poses. Then translate the pose into one of our three characters. But don't use part of our sketch hour poring over this kind of material. Do it on your own time.

I have no objection to you first reading this book, as well as The Natural Way to Draw, and Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, in its entirety. Just don't start doing any of the exercises out of context. What we are working up to is a portfolio of drawings and pencil-test reel of short bits of animation.

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It seems intimidating doesn't it?  After you do it once though to break through that intimidation factor you'll find the inner joy in that crazed act of instant creativity.  And over time your quick drawing skills will improve, and you'll be drawing better and more detail the more you do it.

I created this audio file to help in the timing process.  Its a one minute sound file that is completely blank until the last second when you'll hear a little chime.  If you play this on your computer, or Ipod, etc. and set it to loop, you'll get a neat little 'ding' every minute to remind you to start a new sketch.  Its great in that stops you from having to always be glancing at a clock to time yourself, which allows you to better focus on the drawing.

The images I used to draw from for this week's exercises can be found here http://www.adammcmahon.com/blog/2007/11/10/construction-week-2/ and here
http://www.adammcmahon.com/blog/2007/11/10/construction-week-3/

Wow, how quickly I can fall so far behind.  I gotta get in gear and catch up so I can work on week 4's Tex Avery hilarious takes.  I don't have everything drawn yet for week's 2 and 3, and there are more I haven't scanned in.  Some I did scan in aren't even finished.  I figured it would be good to post these anyway since they show how I'm building the drawings up from a foundation to the details.  I'll continue to update this post throughout the week as I finish more drawings.

I'm starting a new daily routine to improve my drawing skills.  Every day I'm going to draw a few images from some great cartoons of the past.  All cartoons up until the U.P.A. period were drawn to look like they had dimension.  To achieve this, the animators would draw using construction, meaning they would draw out the building blocks of a character (spheres, cylinders, egg shapes, etc) then wrap the surface detail around these forms to help give the illusion of depth.  Its an essential concept to master if you want to draw your own cartoon characters.  You can find more information about construction drawing here:

http://www.adammcmahon.com/blog/2007/11/10/construction-drawing-methods/

So, while I'm practicing construction drawing with my own characters, I'll also be learning from the masters by copying their work and analysing the structure and line as I draw.  Each week I'll post up some screen captures from a particular animated short and throughout the week I'll draw a few images per day.  Then I'll post the results here on my blog at the end of the week.  I encourage anybody else who wishes to improve their drawing skills to participate as well.  You can post the images on your own site/blog and then put a link in the comments section to share with everybody else.  This way we can leave feedback for each other and help one another improve their drawing skills.

I created a section on my blog called "drawing exercises" where you can find the weekly updated images.  The link is just under the title of my blog, or you can find it here:

http://www.adammcmahon.com/blog/drawing-exercises/

I hope to see all your great drawings soon!

Here is a list of great resources for those of you interested in learning how to properly draw, well, anything!  These resouces all demonstrate how to draw cartoon characters using a construction technique.  However, once you understand this concept, it can really be applied to just about anything you wish to draw.

Animation by Preston Blair

Part one
http://www.animationarchive.org/2006/05/media-preston-blairs-animation-first.html

Part two
http://www.animationarchive.org/2006/05/media-preston-blairs-animation-first.html

Stephen Worth over at the Animation Archive has posted probably the best resource given to us to learn the techniques of construction, and it's free!  This brilliant work was made by the great cartoon draftsman, Preston Blair, and explains in detail everything you need to know about properly constructing a cartoon character.  This is hands down the best resource for learning how to draw cartoons.  If you use it, please show your gratitude by making a donation to the animation archive, the paypal link can be found on their page.

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John has posted many articles on his blog further explaining the use of construction in drawings.  He shows many examples of how cartoons from the golden age used this technique, and explains why learning this skill is so important.  You can find many of his posts regarding construction using the following link:

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/search/label/construction

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If after reading Preston Blair's book, you just can't get enough of this construction drawing lessons, you can find more information on it with two books by Brian Lemay.  While Brian's draftmanship isn't up to par with Preston Blair's, he still does a great job of explaining the techniques and also shows how you can use the ideas to create characters of your own.

Designing Cartoon Characters for Animation, vol. 1
http://www.brianlemay.com/Books/design.html

Designing Cartoon Characters for Animation, vol. 2
http://www.brianlemay.com/Books/design2.html

Designing Cartoon Characters for Animation, vol. 2 DVD
http://www.brianlemay.com/Books/designingvideo.html

If you know of other resources, post them in the comments section and I'll add them to the post here.

Here is the first of what should become many drawing practice posts.  I'm copying frames from the golden age of cartoons in an effort to improve the use of construction in my drawings.  Construction is simply breaking down of a character into simpler forms, spheres, cylinders, etc.  When you draw the character, you first draw those simple forms as a foundation.  Then you build the features and details around those forms.  Its the best way to give your characters dimension and make them feel like they live in a 3d world.  I should do a post illustrating this concept for those of you not in the animation world.

For those of you also practicing  this drawing concept, let me know your progress!  I'd like to hear any tips, tricks, trials, and tribulations you've learned/experienced in your pursuit to become better artist.